September 8, 2008 (InfoPowa News) — U.S. professional player Edward Sabat may only be 22 years old, but he's already cashed in on eight major tournaments and this weekend scored his biggest earnings ever: the $453,851 first prize in the PokerStars Asia Pacific Poker Tour Macau Main Event. To do it, the young gun had to survive a field of 538 players that included some of the world's best-known players.
Names like John Juanda, Joe Hachem and brother Tony, J.C. Tran, John "The Razor" Phan, Lee Nelson, J.J. Liu, 2007 APPT Macau Champion Dinh Le, Men "The Master" Nguyen and his wife Van, David Chiu, Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier, who started out in topical "joker" fancy dress and makeup, Chad Brown, Mel Judah, Julian Powell and Vanessa Rousso, the previous week's APT Macau winner Yevgeniy Timoshenko and runner-up Casey Kastle and former WSOP champs Johnny Chan and Mansour Matloubi.
Sabat may have been the youngest player at the 12-hour final table, but he started play with the second biggest chip stack and seemed to thrive on the competition, ultimately victorious in a heads up with Malaysian player Charles Chua.
Singaporean pro Diwei Huang took the chip lead into the final table after three days of APPT Main Event action, facing Sabat, South Korean player So Myung Sim, Tian Chen from China, Kuok Wai Will Cheong of Macau, Denmark's Jeppe Drivsholm and Mikael Rosen from Sweden, Brit Javed Abrahams and Charles Chua from Malaysia.
Korean So Myung Sim was first to fall after a period of cautious fencing play around the table when he was eliminated by Chen, and Abrahams followed in eighth place after a clash with Chua. Tian Chen was next to fall, heading to the rail in seventh place after losing to Sabat, who went on to send Kuok Wai Will Cheong home in sixth place and Drivsholm in fifth.
Chua was again active in fourth place elimination of Mikael Rosen, who pocketed the first of the six figure cheques worth $108,600.
The heads up was decided when Sabat took down the original chip leader Diwei Huang, who departed with $153,984, leaving only Chua to be vanquished, albeit with a million dollar chip lead. Undaunted, Sabat doubled up early on to wrest the lead from Chua, continuing to extend the lead and pressurise his opponent until he achieved final victory. Chua had put up a good fight and certainly earned his second place winnings of $291,871.
Sabat, who qualified for the APPT online at PokerStars, took the title and the lion's share of the $1,620,000 prize pool — a new record for an Asian poker tournament.